RED

New RED project: DEMOCRACY

How could MPs better connect with their constituents? That's the question we set out to answer in this latest RED project.

We asked constituents to design their perfect MP; ran a design workshop with 15 MPs in parliament; debated the issues on the Today Programme; and we spent an intensive week working alongside a constituency office in Doncaster to develop a new set of services for MPs.

We published our results in the snappily-titled report, 'Ten practical things every MP can do to rebuild democracy in their constituency', which sets out proposals for new services for MPs, a hansard for constituents and a 'Constitupedia' - a resource of consituency best practice.

There's a short film of the project below and if you're interested in the detail a presentation of our Transformation Design process.

See RED/democracy

Home Green Home

Robin Murray, director of RED during the energy project, has been busy. In partnership with lifestyle management service TenUK, the London Bourough of Lewisham and the Mayor of London he's developing a new kind of energy service - one that will help you green your home without the hassle.

Over the coming months the partnership will prototype the Green Homes service with 40 homes in Lewisham. The service includes: a home energy check-up, expert advice, finance, carbon payback grants and a second check-up to help you see what your saving.

If you're thinking of greening your home, and particularly if you live in Lewisham watch this space...the team are looking for people who are interested in participating in the prototype. www.greenhomeslondon.co.uk

Designing new public services presentation

I've had lots of requests from people who heard me speak at conferences in the US recently for a copy of my slides. The presentation sets out why we need a new generation of public services and a new(design-led) method of creating them. I talked about our two healthcare projects, designing for behaviour change and transformation design. Click here for a pdf of the presentation and a (very) rough transcript.

Download presentation

Download script

RED Open House on air

In September RED opened it's dorrs for the second year of RED Open House during London Design Festival. We had a great time chatting to all those who came and would like to thank them in particular for their ideas, feedback and discussion. For anyone who had thought they might like to come but got distracted, waylaid or otherwise engaged, you can listen to the presentation here. (MP3, 40mins, 19mb )

We-think: the power of mass creativity - what do you think?

RED Associate, Charles Leadbeater, has realeasd a draft of his new book, We-think: the power of mass creativity, prior to publication and invites review and comment. The book looks at the rise of the likes of Wikipedia and Youtube, Linux and Craigslist and what this means for the way we organise ourselves, not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporations. Charlie's argument is that these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work. People want to be players not just spectators, part of the action, not on the sidelines. Take at look!

Design Spam

Today I recieved this email from Ali and Mahdi who are upping the stakes in design related spam. They are not offering a $99 logo but a the design for a four door car body including antifog lights. Please contact Ali if you are interested...

Dear Sir' Greetings'
Hereby we ' Ali Ghorbani and Mahdi Hossini have designed a body Of an automobile including doors ' bumpers , rings, wheels, front and Rear antifog lights and the total appearace this design is a four doors Vehicle and it is designed by "3DsMax , AutoCad, Flash5" software' So if you would like to buy such a car design , please kindly get in Touch with us via the following e-mail .

With best regards.
Ali Ghorbani Mahdi Hossini
E-mail: neweditionsystem@yahoo.com

Transatlantic tripping

In the last few weeks I've spoken at three great conferences in the US on the future of design:
Emergence06 at Carnegie Mellon on Service Design,
IIT's About, With & For on user-centred design,
And the Sarasota Design Summit.
I talked about three things: the need to design a new generation of public services, what RED is learning about how to design for behaviour change around issues like climate change and chronic disease, and transformation design as a way to bring policymakers, economists, designers and innovators together to create new solutions.

The excitement around design thinking and where it may lead businesses has been growing in the US for some time now, and these conferences highlighted the power design has to inspire and transform organisations and their offerings.
Most interestingly for me, I found a huge appetite out there for applying design to social issues - and judging by the number of relevant presentations and discussions it's a fast-growing area.

]]> The response to the work of RED and the Design Council in general (especially Factfinder) has been fantastic; lots of people wanted to know how to replicate RED’s approach in a US policy context. I saw work from a couple of great non-profits, and also picked up a new magazine called 'Good', about the 'merger of capitalism and idealism' and featuring lots of innovative social enterprises, including microfinance portal Kiva, who have employed designers Cale Ryder and Jon Rodriguez to look into designing new systems for third world borrowers to upload their stories to the site. See their experiences at intocontext.org. The tide seems to be turning on sustainability too, away from the 'chair made of plastic bottles' towards much more systemic and far-reaching solutions being proposed by design groups. Commitment from corporate US giants like Walmart to changing the market for items like energy saving bulbs, and Participant Productions' film An Inconvenient Truth are creating a new feeling of optimism about what the US can achieve; service design group live|work are tapping into this by setting up a New York branch focussed on sustainable service solutions. Two of the conferences were organised by masters students, from IIT and CMU, and it was clear from their excellent discussions that the next generation of design leaders

The low road to reform

Over the summer RED ran a short design project to reconnect politicians with voters. We did not concentrate on the high road to democratic reform: Lords Reform, Electoral reform, devolution, or constitutional reform. But, focused instead on the low road to democratic renewal. We looked at how voters experience their local constituency MP.

Click here for the publications and film relating to the project RED/democracy

Read on for a copy of a talk given by RED at Labour Party Conference 2006.

]]> We did 3 things. Firstly, we talked to the public to get a better understanding of the problem. We ran a design workshop for 15 MPs and their staff to get them to put themselves in the shoes of the public. And finally we developed some prototyped practical solutions working for a week in an MP's constituency office in Doncaster.

We viewed MPs as a provider of a service to a local community, and tried to develop a new 'service offering' for them. This included some familiar and unfamiliar ideas. The familiar ideas, included services like newsletters websites and surgeries. The unfamiliar included group surgeries, street surgeries, clusters, reverse invitations, the new local Hansard and a constitupedia. To find out more about our designs visit 195.157.47.225/red

What does all this mean? We think to renew our democracy and public realm we have to renew our vision of what it means to be a citizen in a healthy democracy. This vision is about how individuals participate in the creation of public goods such as democracy but also including health, education, safety, wellbeing, community, prosperity and so on.

RED has become critical of the government vision of the citizen. We think it is unnecessarily narrow.

We think they view the citizen as an individualised consumer of public goods, acting selfishly, choosing between rival providers (whether it is schools hospitals or care providers). They expect citizens to vote their feet when dissatisfied or to complain loudly when they do not get what they want. Citizens are invited to take part in our institutions by becoming school governors or trustees of hospitals or by getting involved in party politics.

RED's vision of a citizen is of the individual as producers and not just consumer of public goods. We see citizens acting collectively as well as individually. We see them participating in the creation of their own health, education, care, wellbeing and safety. We see citizens taking responsiblity for their own behaviours and lifestyles, choosing to engage and get involved rather than leave. Citizen can expect to be challenged to take more responsibility in their lives, and at the same time they can expect to seek support from public services with making difficult changes to their lifestyle and behaviour.

On the basis of this vision RED tries to create future services with and for the public that start with the individual, prevent problems rather than cure them, support people to change their behaviours, distribute resources rather than centralise them and enable the public and professionals to co-create better outcomes for themselves. This vision is how we believe we can renew our democracy and our public realm.

This is a copy of a talk given by RED at Labour Party Conference 2006.

So how do you save the planet?

RED has been thinking hard about how best to reduce carbon emissions by influencing consumer behaviour. There seem to be two options available to the government.

]]> RED has been thinking hard about how best to reduce carbon emissions by influencing consumer behaviour. There seem to be two options available to the government.

Firstly, to regulate polluters to produce more low carbon products and services. This sounds attractive but it is much easier to regulate emissions from a few coal fired power stations, than regulate the enegergy efficiency of millions of household products. If the government banned inefficient light bulbs, TVs, or cars, new and equally inefficient products would emerge just as quickly as the old ones disappeared. Companies are brilliant at getting round these types of rules. Its how they make money.

The second option is to put a price on carbon emissions which makes green products and services more cheaper and more desirable than polluting ones. Sounds great. The market adjusts and produces more green goods and the old high carbon alternatives fade away through competition. The weakness here is how do you put a price on carbon? Do you use carbon credits and trading (see earlier blog posts) or do you use tax? And what happens when cheaper goods are seen by the public as less desirable - like in the car market or the housing market? Finally, the government has taxed petrol hugely for years so why hasn't petrol been replaced by cheaper greener fuels for our cars? Clearly the market doesn't work every time!

The Party is over

RED has been busy during the Party Conference season this year.

]]> Hilary spoke at a Policy Network fringe event where she outlined a vision of switching off the post-war welfare state, replacing it with cocreated services that prevent rather than cure social problems like climate change, anti-social behaviour and chronic disease. John Hutton MP joined in the debate which was chaired by Hilary Armstrong MP.

Matthew spoke at a Compass fringe event on Democracy and the Public Realm with John Denham MP and Geoff Mulgan of the Young Foundation. He talked about RED's work on constituency MPs - looking at ways to rebuild our democracy by improving the relationship between the public and their local representatives. Read more about the debate here.

RED was also at fringe events on Climate Change with David Miliband MP the Environment Minister, and Malcolm Wicks MP the Energy Minister.

Braungart Workshop

Last year I went to see Michael Braungart, author of Cradle to Cradle, speak at Voices from the Edge. Not only is Braungart a delightful speaker, his ideas on our approach to production and consumption, I think, are inspiring and refreshing (see the post). In November Braungart is running a workshop - 'an opportunity to learn how to incorporate Cradle to Cradle into your business process and product design and to become part of the community that is creating the next industrial revolution.' The flyer with all details is here.

Help needed on youth project

Ray Brown is looking to radically update and improve Youth Clubs and Youth facilities, to make them more relevant and compelling for today's youth and the wider benefit of the community. Using latest thinking on youth engagement and current research into young people's transition into adulthood he will propose a range of activities for provision and then apply a design led approach to innovation within youth services.

Ray is working with the School for Social Entrepreneurs and wants to pull together a group of people, designers, policy researchers, child psychotherapist, users, an administrator and fund raiser to build the ideal youth facility. His research so far has shown empty centres and places full of equipment that the kids only want to break and realise we have yet to pin point what kids need.

RAY NEEDS SOME ASSISTANCE - at the moment he needs background research on -

Play Therapy and working up a template of activities that might be offered
Government’s aims and publications on youth work
Examples of centres of excellence both in the UK and abroad
Finding innovative youth work partners in the UK and specialist providers
Consultation strategies
Producing a presentation and / or PowerPoint, to include the history of youth work and youth provision
Conservation concepts that can be incorporated into the design philosophy

This research will go towrds preparing a presentation for potential partners and funders - email Ray if you are interested in being a part of this project.

The new business of designing for behaviour change

A couple of recent posts featuring RED

Alex Steffen for Worldchanging who met with Jennie at our open house day the week before last.

And Tamara of Livework New York writing for Treehuger about the Emergence conference and the new business of designing for behaviour change...

jGuateAmala!

jGuateAmala! translates from Spanish to 'Love Guatemala'. It is a long- term project campaigning to encourage Guatemalans to think positively about their country's future. Alice Rawsthorn's article in the Herald tells how Bruce Mau's design thinking reached beyond the creation of a visual identity for the campaign, and helped redefine the vision. Rawsthorn talks about geodesign or 'new design' as an emerging field in which design thinking is used to address social and political problems. Mau's Massive Change project (exhibition, book, events) had previously 'explored paradigm-shifting events, ideas, and people, investigating the capacities and ethical dilemmas of design'. Of jGuateAmala! Mau says "Of course, we can't solve Guatemala's problems, that can only be accomplished by Guatemalans. But by sharing our communication tools, we can help. What could be better than that?"

Alice Rawsthorn was Director of the Design Museum before becoming design critic of the International Herald Tribune. Read the article here.

The name is BoND.....

Our colleagues in Bolton are moving ahead apace with developing the joint ideas for self-management in diabetes. The BoND team at the Bolton Diabetes Network have been driving this forward, with support from across the NHS in Bolton and from other partners and 15 GP's surgeries signed up for the trial. Plans for rolling out a pilot of the diabetes agenda cards are now on the verge of going live with the goal of getting initial results in March 2007, with hopes for identifying a wider roll-out of the cards and trainers from summer 2007.